Rue's Eulogy
by iwearastetson
Summary: Katniss looses herself. She finds a sort of peace in visiting the shadows in her mind. But no one can know that she dreams of blood and roses. Rated T for madness, but no actual swearing.


**Disclaimer: No, The Hunger Games isn't mine, I own nothing. **

**This is a version of something that I handed in for school. This is a little darker than the draft the teacher saw though... If anyone actually reads this, reviews would be great *cough cough*. **

She gets hardly any sleep, her dreams full of the rough-red stench of dying blood and whimpers of the dead hanging in her ears. Her family, sitting around the clean, polished wood of the breakfast table, laden with processed foods and pressed juices, offers no comfort for late nights. They sympathise, Prim slipping under the smooth blankets to quiet her screams and whimpers in the unforgiving night, but they don't understand.

The forest, with its welcoming stillness and ignorant, blissful wildlife, is her only escape. She looses herself daily in the whisper of her boots against the forest floor and her suspended breaths before the sharp twang of her bowstring in the silence of shifting branches.

The path she takes is marked by broken branches, tossed aside in a fit of rage and grief. It has grown back a little now. The skeletal fingers have healed and tiny leaves are unfurling, masking the damage.

Though the evidence of a moment where she fully lost herself is receding, she visits that place inside her mind, laughing shadows, grasping at her as she runs, trying to escape. President Snow has succeeded in at least one thing, she cannot run from him. He has her in the one place he cannot touch, and the prison inside herself keeps her longer every day.

The memory is still dark in her mind, whispering in and out of the forest, but in a way, it calms her, and as her back rests against rough tree bark, she lets the shadow float among her thoughts.

_The cameras have left her now, now their fun is over. They will be back. They will come to swoop overhead, to laugh at her, stare at her with their sightless, reflective eyes. She shudders. Keeps walking. The dry grass crunches and crumbles into paper shreds underfoot and she stomps down harder. That grass is dead. Everyone's dead. Rue is dead. She laughs. The laughter wracks her body until she curls up on herself, gasping for air among the dead. Tears are streaming, her perfect mascara bleeding down her face, dropping sideways, splashing onto luxuriously styled hair. Part of her knows that crying is good. It keeps her sane. _

She remembers somehow getting to the fence. She leaned agains it for a full minute, telling herself that she was catching her breath through her sobs. Her fingers looped themselves through the wires, half hoping electricity would numb her body, but the surge never came. So she crawls through the hole and stumbles on.

_The forest spins a little. It loops overhead and her stomach swoops along with it. She giggles through the heaving sobs and she lies, somehow on the ground again. The pain in her back registers and it makes her groan and giggle and sob and choke on non-existent air. _

_She stares at the sky as it swirls and dips. An arm, her arm, swims up, but it drops before she can touch the wispy clouds. Eventually she rolls onto her stomach and, with much effort, pulls her body into place and takes halting steps forwards. The sun dances in among the branches and taunts her with its glittering. The shadows of leaves turn her into a prowling cat. Then the jewels of light turn into a fire and her stomach turns over with the scent of blood and roses. Then she is spinning spinning spinning falling running swirling sobbing. She comes to a clearing in the forest and looks up. The sun is so happy. She smiles and chokes on sobs as tears stream down her face. Her sobs turn to screams and she curses the sun. Why should the sky allowed to be happy? Everyone else is dead. Flesh rotting slowly in a little black box. A grisly image comes to mind. A screaming, thrashing skeleton in a coffin. Writhing. A spear still embedded in its stomach, blood staining the whitewashed bones. She thinks of Rue lying dead, covered in a wreath of flowers, covering the bloodstains, masking the pain._

**That's where my periodic writers block kicked in. I'll update when I can get the words down again. **


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